Geocaching in Shropshire and beyond…

A hectic few weeks and a quick catch up!

Looking out from the top of the main York Minster tower, near to the YOSM cache

We’ve been really busy with other things the last few weeks so not had time to write our normal blog posts. I’ll try and get things up to date here in one go…

23 June 2010 – Birmingham City Centre

Part of the queue outside the Bullring at 5am - it got a LOT busier still later on!

I was in Birmingham city centre for the launch of the iPhone 4 so decided to do a couple of quick caches before I went back to the hotel for an early night as I had to be up really early to beat the lines at the Apple Store the next morning.

I opted for the two caches closest to the hotel. The first was proving tricky as my GPSr would not settle with all the tall buildings around. As I was working out the possible hides to check, someone walked up and asked if I’d found it yet. It was bikeboyroy who was looking for the same cache. We joined forces and soon had the cache in hand. The second cache was a short distance away and a much easier find as I ignored my GPSr and just used cacher’s instinct.

I was at the Apple Store for 5am the next morning and had a fun time chatting to like minded people while waiting in line. After 7.5 hours waiting (I must be mad!) I finally got my hands on my new phone – it was well worth the wait too :-).

26 June 2010 – 3 Quick Caches closer to home

Old wharf buildings at Wappenshall

We’d saved the big caching day out this week for Sunday so on Saturday I opted for 3 closest to home not founds, after dropping Isaac off at school. The first one was half way up The Wrekin and a fun one to walk up the hill to. The next two caches were quick and easy with no problems at all. The last of the two I did by cacher’s instinct and did not find the first stages of it (it was a Multi) until after I’d signed the final logbook.

27 June 2010 – The Lenches series and various other Worcestershire caches

Beautiful village church in Rous Lench

The main target of our day out today was a 12 mile walk round the new Lenches series near Evesham in Worcestershire. After that we’d planned to pick off as many nearby easier caches as we could before it was time to go home.

Newly planted woodland along the first part of the walk

We parked to the south of the loop and started off with cache #12, working our way down the numbers to #1 and then from #25 back to where we’d parked at #13. We were hoping this might mean we would bump into other cachers who were doing the series in the correct order, but it was not to be so as the only other finders of the day had been and gone long before us (we’re not early risers).

Some great Wimbledon themed tennis scarecrows along the walk

A really lovely walk ensued with lots of good caches and some fab countryside. The first half of the walk was more hilly, but the terrain then flattened out for the second half and the journey back towards where we’d parked. If I’m truthful, I would have liked twice the number of caches on the walk than there were as some of the gaps between the caches were pretty long. That being said though, it was not a big problem and we both thoroughly enjoyed the whole walk.

A very elaborate looking post box in Rous Lench

Back at the Jeep we took the roof off, wound down the windows (it was the hottest day of the year so far) and decided to pick off some drive-by’s and cache and dashed. A few caches round Cropthorne followed by quite a few more in Pershore followed.

The stunning Pershore Abbey. A very big church for such a small town.

On the way back to the M5 and home, we totally missed the motorway entrance and TomTom took us up to the next motorway entrance by Droitwich. On the way we could not resist a quick drive-by we spotted on TomTom. It had had 2 recent DNF’s but we went for a look anyway and Isaac put his hands straight on it.

Love the amusing place names around here

38 finds for the day and a fab walk in some stunning countryside. Just what we needed :-).

The York Mega Series is a set of 82 caches, plus a bonus cache on a 17.5 mile circular walk. We’d been alerted to it by a caching friend who also said it was bikeable. That’s like a red rag to a bull as we LOVE caching by bike.

The earlier part of the walk takes you along this stream for a while

A few days before we were due to go, the cache owner made an announcement that they were going to archive half of the loop as they think they have a cache trasher at work who keeps removing the caches. We thus decided it was now or never for our trip to York and as Isaac had just broken up for the summer holidays from school, this weekend was the perfect opportunity.

One of the earlier urban caches. Love the colours in the bush behind Isaac.

We set off from home but did not arrive at the start of the loop until 11:50am. Looking at the previous logs, it looked possible to do the circuit by bike in around 7 hours so we should still have plenty of time.

A lovely field of poppies near to one of the caches

Off we set on our bikes. The first stage took us through some urban areas with nice easy caches. It was then out into the open countryside using a combination of quiet lanes and footpaths over fields around the caches.

The cache nearby was called "Rickety Bridge" - very aptly named too!

At the half way stage in a lovely village called Sutton we spotted a nice Tea Shop on our route so stopped for a lovely ice-cream, followed by a wander round the village. Time was getting on a bit now so we headed back to the caching.

Looking down the main street in the village of Sutton on the Forest

The second half of the series was the part affected by the muggled caches, but we managed to find quite a few more than we were expecting. We suspect a farmer has taken a dislike to caches on his land and removed all of them. The other missing ones tended to be 35mm containers hidden in hawthorn bushes about 5ft along a quiet lane. Some were there and some were not.

This way to the next cache!

Back at our starting point, we headed off the short distance for the bonus cache, which was a nice quick find. We then took in one final cache in the village before going back to the Jeep and the drive to our hotel on the east side of Leeds.

Relaxing at an open air gym near to a cache after finishing the Mega Series

Near the hotel we managed 3 more quick finds, taking the tally for the day to 88.

We’d planned a more relaxed day today, doing more touristy things round the beautiful Roman city of York, with a few caches as we were passing. We wanted to get to at least 101 finds for the trip, so we ended up with 9900 finds at the end.

The John Smiths brewery in Tadcaster

We thus did a few quicker caches on the drive into York, with the main one of interest (to me at least!) being a Virtual outside the old John Smiths brewery in Tadcaster. I won’t even try and imagine the amount of John Smiths I must have drunk when I was younger, and especially at University.

Looking up at the MASSIVE York Minster

We caught the Park and Ride into York itself and had a lovely few hours wandering round the ancient streets and along the old Roman walls. The highlight of the day for us both was going up the tower at York Minster and bagging the YOSM trigpoint at the top (the views were pretty good from the top too!).

At a virtual cache by the old Roman town walls

We eneded up with 16 finds for the day, making the total for the trip 104 :-).

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Hah, I was at the Bullring for the iPhone 4 too – though I think I was a bit too late, I arrived at about 08:15 and got told to go away (after they put me on the “priority list”) as they had sold out of all the non-reserved phones. Managed to pick one up on the Monday after though, with a total wait of ~20 minutes in total… :D